Long live the vulva!

Table musical based on the motifs of Liv Strömquist

Despite millennia of obsessive engagement with the female sexual organ, the question arises as to how much we actually know about it. Long Live the Vulva! speaks mischievously and humorously about extremely serious and important topics. In the play, we solemnly proclaim the scale of deserving oppressors of female sexuality, decipher the centuries-old mysterious disappearance of the clitoris, and repeat the word vagina until it no longer feels like a taboo, but like an expression of freedom.

Female sexuality has occupied the (male) imagination since the beginnings of humanity. Every major socio-political change had as its mission to redefine the position of women: from the worship of fertility goddesses, expulsions from paradise, witch trials, clitoridectomies and other forms of treatment of female sexual desire to the objectification of the female body in capitalist today.

The graphic novel The Fruit of Knowledge by Swedish comic book artist Liv Strömquist, translated by Mita Gustinčič Pahor and published by Vige Vage knjige, is a socially critical, political, feminist and humorous visual study of the perception of sexual organs and female sexuality over time. The author (with quoting sources) reviews the basic historical, sociological and medical theories that still influence the position of women and girls today; both at the individual and collective level. The creators of the performance Long Live the Vulva! saw inspiring stage material in the novel. The seemingly light-hearted, sarcastic way of comic narration offered an interesting starting point for thinking about an appropriate genre framework and theatrical language that could be both parodic and activist. Silenced matriarchal societies, gender as a social construct, pathologized and oppressed (female) lust, female (in)equality, the impact of the social narrative of sexuality on female identity are just some of the topics highlighted by the performance. Long Live the Vulva! thus speaks of the silenced, celebrates the despised, and opens a public space for reflection on the most intimate issues.